Trump Team Looks to Ease Rules for Self-Driving Cars

Top Stories of the Week

Trump Team Is Seeking to Ease US Rules for Self-Driving Cars (link, no paywall). Love him or hate him, it’s hard to deny the impact that Elon Musk had on the recent election. Seems like a guy you want on your side and while this may benefit companies like Tesla, Tesla’s biggest question mark remains whether their tech approach can even come close to the level of safety that Waymo is currently exhibiting. So Tesla still has a ways to go before they even need to worry about regulatory frameworks.

Nuro expands driverless autonomous vehicle testing in push to attract customers (link). Nuro is rolling out a test fleet of its driverless, passenger-less R3 vehicles across the Bay Area and Houston, two months after the autonomous vehicle technology startup changed its business strategy to license its AV tech to automakers and mobility providers.

Good sign that they’re testing/expanding, but I’m not sure this technology is ready to be licensed and sold just yet. Waymo owns and operates their fleet because the margins aren’t there (or even close) to license it, so this move seems a bit desperate by Nuro. I do think in the medium to long term there is a compelling case for driverless delivery though since a majority of courier pay is tips and you don’t need to tip a robot.

Cool Rides

So nice to be surrounded by Friends ☺️ (link). Cool feature; Waymo now shows other Waymos. It would be more useful though if the Waymos can start to learn from each other and avoid traffic/provide some additional insight based on surrounding cars. Wasn’t Tesla supposed to have a feature like this by now?

Joe Rogan’s reaction to seeing a Waymo in Austin, TX. Just wait till he sees Tesla Robotaxis everywhere 👀 (link).

Other Stuff

GM self-driving unit Cruise admits to submitting false report, will pay $500,000 fine (link).

Love Waymo when I can get it. But it really needs a big on-screen button that says “I’m running behind, can you step on it?” upon pressing which the robocar responds with “certainly!” and I dunno, probably does nothing differently 😂 (link). 

This is the first crack I’ve seen in the ‘Waymo Driver’ experience. I took a Waymo in San Francisco earlier this week (link) and noticed the same thing. Waymo picked me up 5 minutes away/down the hill (thankfully not up!) from my hotel - no idea why. And then it was painstakingly slow moving through SF rush hour traffic and dropped me off right in the middle of 2nd street (only one lane/no way to pass), where we held up traffic and then the Waymo sat there for another 20 seconds while everyone honked at it after I had exited the vehicle lol.

As the novelty wears off, Waymo needs to figure this issue out since it degrades the product experience compared to an Uber. Let’s just say on my way back, I took an Uber.

Interesting robotaxi data from SFMTA (h/t Benjamin Schneider). Waymo had a big summer, with 273K rides in August, while Cruise struggled with way fewer trips. Most of Waymo’s rides are in SF’s central, transit-heavy neighborhoods, which is no surprise since it’s the exact same product as rideshare.

But that’s where the similarities end. As I mentioned last week, Muni does over 500k trips a week in SF, while Uber/Lyft are likely around 1/10 of that. Waymo is probably doing around 5k trips per week (or 1/100 of muni) in SF. So in a business sense, you’ve got Muni with a 90% market share but serving a completely different end of the market from a price point perspective. The product/experience/customer set could not be more different so saying that they are competitors just doesn’t make sense.

Waymo Marketing

Nothing says 'driverless future' like advertising a robotaxi on a bus stop (link).

Thanks everyone for using my referral code ❤️ (link). 

Waymo x KeshaRose #Joyride collab =🔥(link).

Waymo has great word of mouth marketing but I’ve noticed that they’re really ramping up their paid marketing efforts and the team is coming up with some creative stuff. Cool to see.

Until next week.

-Harry